Bungee cords are extremely common and used in a variety of ways. The most simple and common bungee cord terminus is a stiff wire hook which connects with a coiled wire basket. The bungee cord is fed into the basket, bent back on itself, and the loop so formed is secured by a crimped hog ring. The position of one form of terminus known in the art is adjustable along the length of the cord; in other forms the position is fixed. A variety of still other forms are known to provide a variety of features to suit different applications. Many have open hooks; others rely on thin plastic or metal closures; some are plastic, and some are metal.
In the prior art, there are several ways utilized to anchor a bungee cord in a hook or other terminus, one of which is to tie the end of the bungee cord in a knot and have it engage a previously formed terminus, or have it molded into a terminus. However, this results in a very bulky terminus which gets in the way of anchoring the bungee cord in a variety of situations.
Another known method is to simply loop the end of the bungee cord through an eye formed in a proximal end of a hook, cinch it with a hog ring, and cast it into a molded terminus base. To make the terminus smaller, it has been known to use crimps, or hog rings cast within a molded terminus. However, bungee cords become thinner as they are stretched by additional loading, and can become sufficiently thin so as to slip out of a crimp or hog ring.
Flat bungee cords, being thinner than round bungee cords of the same strength, have been found to be difficult to anchor within a terminus. Typical flat bungee cord is composed of 10 or 12 individual small bungee cords, with the braiding of the outer sleeve interwoven so as to connect them into a single unified bungee cord. Utilizing knots, crimps or hog rings distort the shape of flat bungee cord, and do not grip flat bungee cords as well as they do round bungee cords. Distortion also makes the flat cords more bulky than similarly treated round bungee cords. In both multi-core, composite stranded bungee cords, described above, and in single, solid core flat bungee cords, the core is quite thin making it difficult to adequately support the load of the entire cord at a single point.